Tomorrow, maybe
by devozione
Summary: There were goose bumps all over my skin, and I didn't know where they came from. / Brittana hospital AU.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Hey there! This is my first attempt at writing fanfiction in quite a few years, so here are two very short chapters to get my rusty writing back in swing. I promise that the chapters will get longer eventually, I just tend to start out with short chapters. Also, I apologise in advance for boring you with medical detail, feel free to call me out on that. I just really, really love my field of expertise. The rating is subject to change at some point or other, we'll see.**

**These two chapters here are un-beta'ed and English is not my first language, so if anyone feels like looking over future chapters for all my bigger and smaller mess-ups, shoot me a message! Also, drop by my tumblr and say hi! I love talking to people :) projectilevomitingrainbows (.) tumblr (.) com**

_Chapter 1 - Santana_

I removed the thin layer of sweat that had formed on my forehead with the sleeve of my lab coat. The minute our daily afternoon conference had ended, I leapt up the stairs back to my ward. Today had been a crazy day so far and somehow, my hopes of returning to my pile of work having magically disappeared were rather slim.

Usually, two doctors would split a ward between them, thus splitting the workload. My colleague, a young female physician like me, was out sick today, though, leaving me to do both our work.

To make matters worse, it was Friday - so a lot of people that were not to stay the weekend were pushing to be let home. That required me to do the part of my job I hated the most: writing letters to the doctors that would continue to take care of the patients after their stay here. Our letters would outline to them why the patients had gotten here, with which ailments, in which physical and mental state, what we did with them here, how we recommended their treatment be continued.

As often as possible, I'd make that process easier for me by dictating the letter and then having one of the secretaries write it. But that process took its sweet time - too much time for the people I could see pacing around the ward right now, anxious to go home.

I walked past them and into the few square meters of dark chamber that we referred to as the doctor's office, giving my best 'busy doctor on a mission'-look on the way. Common sense apparently didn't tell people that every minute they spent asking me when the letter would be ready was a minute I couldn't work on readying the letter, so I had adopted a very brisk manner of walking and a permanently furrowed brow when navigating the ward. It made me look like I was about to break horrible news to a family or something equally dramatic and it made people shy away from talking to me.

With a sigh of relief, I let myself collapse into a chair in the doctor's office. For a second, I closed my eyes to collect myself and focus on the task at hand. The first point on my to-do list for the rest of the day was writing preliminary letters for five patients that could leave once these were typed.

I let out an exasperated sigh as the door opened. A nurse silently slipped into the room, slowly walked to where I was still sitting in my chair in a rather unflattering position and offered me a cup of coffee. With a tired smile, I accepted the offer and thanked her for being so thoughtful. I took a sip of the hot black liquid. Hospital coffee would usually make me gag and this cup, too, had me fighting its contents down my throat.

Without letting my soft smile falter, I turned back towards my computer and the nurse left as silently as she had arrived. I really was thankful for her bringing me coffee, even though I didn't like it and the message that she really conveyed with her action was that I looked like I needed coffee. Then again, she was pretty correct in that assumption and it felt nice to have somebody look out for me, at least a bit.

Slowly sipping on my coffee, I managed to overcome my unwillingness and began typing the first letter. Most of today's letters would be pretty standard fare, nothing that would have me pondering my wording for hours. Two middle-aged men that were proven not to have had heart attacks. Somebody with an acute crisis of high blood pressure. An old lady with pneumonia that wanted to get back to her nursing home. Lastly, an elderly man with a weak heart.

This was the only letter that gave me a bit of trouble. People usually developed a weak heart slowly, over many years. For the longest time, they either failed to notice or actively ignored how challenges of everyday life, such as climbing stairs, would become increasingly difficult for them. When the weakness of the heart progressed to more severe stages, there were a few tell-tale symptoms that would often bring the patients to the hospital for the first time. The two most prominent of those were water in the legs, resulting in bloated legs and feet, and water in the lungs, resulting in increased difficulty breathing.

Said man had come with both of these signs, his legs so bloated that you could see little bubbles of water right under his skin. We began the standard treatment of heart weakness - removing the excess water, regulating the heart activity and blood pressure to get the most out of the strength the heart had left. He had come in yesterday and despite being a bit weird, had caused little problems. This morning, though, he announced to us that being in hospital was bullshit and that he wanted to go home, treatment be damned. After a couple of doctors unsuccessfully tried to convince him otherwise, we agreed to let him go home - under the condition that he acknowledged that his now untreated heart disease might kill him soon, very soon. He said he preferred that over being treated and so I was now writing him a letter in order to send him home. I didn't think I would have acted the way he did had I been in his place, but he made an informed decision and I ought to respect that.

When I had finished the letters, I printed them, signed them and then handed them to the nurses that would eventually see the people out of the hospital. I went to pour myself another coffee. One of the nurses kept insisting I ate some of the sweets a patient had left for us.

"You've been getting so skinny lately, Santana. Eat something before you vanish!"

"Thanks," I popped some sweets into my mouth "I've just been working a lot recently. I'll see to it to that I don't vanish."

She had a point. Recently, I had been putting a lot of time and effort into my work - both my eating and sleeping habits had suffered from that. My work was very important to me, tough. I had successfully fought my way through college and med school and then landed this job shortly after receiving my MD. This job and I had just clicked - being a general physician in a middle-sized hospital wasn't the stuff medical TV series dreams were made out of, but it was exactly what I wanted to do. Finding your true calling in life was a highly underrated feeling.

The coffee machine announced its success in brewing another half-gallon of disgusting coffee with a beep and it startled me slightly. Realising that I had zoned out, I shook my head to clear my thoughts and quickly downed the last of my now mostly cold coffee.

I tried to straighten my lab coat a bit and then proceeded to the next entry on my to-do list: talking to relatives of patients. This had always been a bit of a double-edged sword for me. Some of them were really sweet, so thankful for the job we did, and tried to help wherever they could. Some on the other hand were not as easy to handle - they worried too much or cared too little, made things harder for the patients and/or us, and some were just plainly annoying. A lot of them were like the patients, though, in that they really only wanted to be given the time of the day. Even if I didn't really have anything to tell them, they were often glad to have talked to the doctor.

After exchanging at least a few words with all the relatives that were currently here, I went to search my direct superior. He was very young for the position he held and I got along really well with him. Even if I didn't have any direct questions for him, I liked taking about all my patients with him every day because it was at the same time a reassurance and a lesson for me - my superior would often point out more differential diagnoses, diagnostic means and treatment options to me.

After completing my discussion with him, I returned to my ward for the next coffee fix. A glance at the clock there told me it was 5.30pm. Not bad, I shrugged, seeing as it was a Friday alone at the ward and I had already checked off most of my to-do list.

"Anyone new come in this afternoon?" I asked one of my favourite nurses. His name was Kurt; he had a flamboyant manner to him and managed to carry out even the least dignified tasks in health care with a certain grace. Upon meeting him, my gaydar had completely overheated and when I finally plucked up my courage and asked him about his sexuality, he had more than happily laid out his entire love life in the most vivid detail to me. Out of all the people in the hospital, he was one of the few I talked to about my personal life with; at least a little.

"Just one young woman. She fainted, neighbours saw it and called 911," Kurt answered.

"Hmm, okay," I took a bored sip from my coffee, "maybe I'll check on her before I continue with the letters. She's in stable condition now, I assume?"

"Oh yes yes, just fine. Has a little cold, maybe, but that's all. You should definitely 'check' on her though." Kurt wiggled his eyebrows at me.

"Are you implying something?" I groaned. I didn't like this impish look he sported.

"Ohh, noo, just that she's hot and proooobably your type."

"That's highly unprofessional, Kurt, and you know it."

"I know, Santana. I also know that it highly pleases you when I'm being unprofessional."

I rolled my eyes at the implication only the two of us could understand. Maybe being open with Kurt hadn't been the brightest of decisions. Usually, I would keep most of my private life to myself. It had given me the reputation of being distant and/or having no private life but it also gave people little opportunity to tease or mock me. One could describe me as a guarded person, which mostly stemmed from high school experience.

Kurt's friendly teasing didn't really bother me, though, if I was being honest with myself. It was moreover endearing to see him have a genuine interest in my life but never resort to prying, like somebody only interest in gossiping about me later would. In contrast to me, he actually tried to improve my love life whenever he saw the chance to, whereas I lacked motivation to do that. And I still couldn't help it - I loved it when people seemed to care about me. Not about me as a cheerleader or about me as a doctor but about me as a person.

Once again, I rolled my eyes at Kurt's smirk and left for my office. Silently, I thanked my dark complexion for hiding the blush I had felt creeping onto my face. The only sign of me blushing was the tips of my ears turning red, and I usually had those hidden under my hair. My face generally seemed to jump at every opportunity to turn hot and - invisibly - red. Had it not been for my tan skin tone, I would have made a terrible poker face: every sort of emotion would have made me turn as red as a tomato.

But so I stood, complexion as even as ever, in front of a small mirror that was mounted over an even smaller sink in my office. As much as I hated to admit it, Kurt's comment had perked my interest, if ever so slightly. I lamely tried to fix my hair that felt streaky and damp after a day spent in an environment that smelled and tasted like disinfecting agent. After lamely trying to re-establish a side parting in my hair, I gave up and concluded that my hair was a lost cause until it saw a shower.

There were probably better places to get a date than the hospital anyway, I thought, and decided to put an end to my pathetic attempts at looking good. I swiftly straightened my lab coat and reorganised the contents of its pockets. At least, I could try to look the doctor part decently. With my best professional face on, I stepped out of my office.

Stopping by the ward overview to gather the patient's name and room number, I made my way to this supposedly hot girl.


	2. Chapter 2

_Chapter 2 – Brittany_

I wasn't entirely sure how I had gotten here. The walls of the room I had found myself in were a stark white. In the air, a mixture of unpleasant smells was lingering and the bed I was sitting on was definitely not mine. There was a dull, slow pounding in my head, my throat was sore and my nose was runny. I squeezed my eyes together and tried to remember what had happened.

I could remember being at work today, but I had gone home early because I didn't feel well. Then I was sitting and lying around on my small couch at home, unable to get comfy. Without a blanket, I was freezing; with a blanket, I was sweating bullets. Lying down had made me cough; sitting up had made me dizzy. While I was busy pondering on my dilemmas, I somehow drifted off into a shallow sleep. The kind of sleep where your dreams always make you feel chased or in a hurry and you probably move a lot in your bed and you wake up being more exhausted than when you fell asleep.

All I could think of when I had been jerked back into awakening once again by a weird thing happening in my dream was soup. My mum used to make soup for me when I was sick. She believed that homemade chicken soup was the best cure for colds and right now, I believed so too. So since I was apparently having a cold, I needed to get some soup. My parents lived in another town, but it was about half an hour by car and I didn't think that was so far. Plus I didn't know who else would make me chicken soup.

The memory started to get cloudier and cloudier there. I went into my hallway, put on shoes and grabbed the keys to my car. In my memory, the hallway looked all weird and fuzzy. Maybe my eyes weren't working properly. I could remember wanting to get to my car as fast as possible because my knees were being all wobbly.

I tilted my head to one side and then the other. That probably hadn't been too smart. If my knees were too wobbly to stand, they were probably too wobbly for gas and throttle, too. It wasn't like I could remember ever actually getting into my car and driving away, anyway. Did I stay at home or did I just forget about my driving? And how did I end up here anyway? I didn't know this place, so I couldn't have driven here...

I took another good look around. Next to the bed I had woken up on was a little, ugly-looking night stand with a glass of water on it. On the side of the room that I could see to my left, there were large windows, partially covered by thick curtains. The side of the room opposing the windows was lined with wardrobes. I turned around to look at the wall behind me. Sitting on a small shelf mounted to the well was a monitor with funny lines and numbers that made no sense to me on it. Under the monitor, a few cables were connected to some sort of computer –or so I supposed. I followed the cables with my eyes and they were leading ... they were leading to me.

Only now did I notice that there were cables coming out from under my shirt. I started to panic and yanked up my shirt. The cables connected to little stickers that were placed all over my body. Now, I recognised the apparatus from TV. It was one of those things that monitor your heart beat and translate it into lines on a long piece of paper - and I was hooked up to one of those. Suddenly, I realised what kind of place I was at - of course, I was in a hospital.

Before I got the chance to continue my train of thought, the door swung upon and somebody entered. It was a young woman, with dark hair and tan skin, clad almost completely in white. She had to be hospital personnel and I hoped I could ask her how I had gotten here. When she turned her eyes towards me, she halted slightly in her movement and then averted her look nervously. I realised my shirt was still yanked up and pulled it down quickly.

The hospital woman slowly walked towards me and held her hand out to greet me.

'Good afternoon. My name is Lopez and I'm the doctor of this ward. You're Ms Pierce, correct?'

I noticed how she was very focused on not looking at my chest while she was speaking. Weird, I thought, she's easily embarrassed. At work, us girls get changed in front of each other all the time and we're cool with it.

'Yeah, that's right. Brittany Pierce. So pleased to meet you.'

Dr. Lopez was a woman about my age. I had always thought doctors would be much older than that. , I also couldn't help but notice that she was very good-looking. Dark messy locks framed a pretty face with eyes that reminded me of chocolate.

Even though I always hated myself for doing so, her looks made me want to be extra nice to her. It was like I was being thankful that she not only took the time to talk to me, she also made for a very nice sight while we were talking. Before I got lost too far in my thoughts, I shook her hand and wanted to get up so she didn't have to talk to me while I was on this weird bed. The pretty doctor was fast to signal that I should remain where I was and she sat down on the edge of my bed.

'Ms Pierce, are you feeling a bit sick?'

'Well, last thing I remember is that I had a cold and since I still feel kinda bad, I suppose I still have it. And it also looks like I'm in a hospital, so I guess I can't be too well.'

'Mhh, and how exactly do you feel bad? Does your head hurt or you feel like you have a fever or ...?'

'I have what having a cold feels like. My head hurts and my legs and arms hurt a little. And my head feels kinda dizzy but that may be because I just woke up.'

'And do you know exactly why you're here?'

'I don't even know what or where exactly this hospital is. The last thing I remember is walking to my car to drive to my parents.'

'And then the next thing you remember is waking up here?'

'Yeah.'

'Mhhmmh,' the doctor made a humming sound and paused a little before continuing. 'Your neighbours saw you faint in front of your car. They called 911, and so you were brought here, to the hospital.'

'Oh... I should call them and tell them I'm fine. I wouldn't want to worry anyone.'

'I'm sure you'll find the time to do that, Ms Pierce. Do you know whether you ever had an epileptic seizure?'

'Like those kids in Japan that watched Pokémon? No, I don't think so.' The doctor snorted a bit when I said that. It was a dorky snort and it didn't fit her composed appearance at all. I decided that I liked the snort.

'Mhh, and did you experience any weird things when walking to your car? Like seeing colourful lights or hearing strange noises?'

'No, I don't remember anything like that.'

'Okay, so I think that you had a rather bad cold and those sometimes affect the heart muscle. We usually don't even notice that, but sometimes the sick heart muscle gets confused when you exercise. So it doesn't beat properly for just a few moments, but that's enough to make our sick selves faint for a bit.'

I guess that's what doctors sound like when they get to say doctor-like things. There was a spark of excitement in her voice and even though I didn't entirely get what she told me, I had the feeling that she knew what she was talking about.

'Uh huh ... Is that bad or something?'

'No, nothing to worry about. But first, we need to confirm that this actually was the case. The sister will hook you up to an ECG shortly and then take you down to echocardiography, where I'll take a look at your heart. Don't worry, it's quick and doesn't hurt.' The excitement in her voice was still there. It was rather cute, actually. Like my little nephew who was so psyched to tell me about his new plastic fire engine.

'Okay. Sure. I'll just lie back down until then because I feel like shit. If that's okay?' I looked at the woman for reassurance. Something in me wanted her to continue talking but there was a bigger portion of me that felt tired and exhausted.

'Yeah, of course it is. I'll also have the nurse give you some cold medicine.'

'Thanks.'

The young woman - what was her name again? I had already forgotten it - smiled and got up slowly. Her smile was really pretty, her white teeth stood out against her tan skin. If she was just to stay here and smile more, that would have been totally okay with me. She patted my legs under the covers slightly and left the room in a very quiet manner.

There were goose bumps all over my skin and I didn't know why.

**A/N: Hope you enjoyed it so far. I welcome all critique, spelling/grammar corrections, hate mail, whatever. Also, I have part of the next chapter already written, so I should be able to put it out there soon enough. **


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: This chapter also hasn't seen a beta, save for a sleepy me on antibiotics. **

_Chapter 3 – Santana_

My face felt so hot when I exited the room that I almost thought myself the next victim of spontaneous human combustion. I felt my hands tremble and my chest heave with shaky breaths. Dear God, that had been incredibly embarrassing.

I was guiltily aware of the fact that my motivation to greet this new patient had not been purely medical - but I most certainly hadn't meant to walk in on her shirtless. To make matters worse, her shirtless self had been extremely nice to look at - the urge to leer at her had been almost as strong as the embarrassment that had made me look away.

I felt horrible, like a pervert. She was clearly less than aware of her situation, and especially unaware of the fact that when you were in a hospital room, there was always a good chance of some sort of hospital stuff randomly busting in. When you enter a patient room for the first time, you could at least have the common courtesy to knock, I scolded myself.

The image of her exposed cleavage, of the bra with the cute polka dots that she had been wearing, of her very toned abdomen still lingered on my mind. It was probably gonna get permanently burned into my retina, for a multitude of reasons. I wondered how much she must work out to have such nice abs - maybe she had a job that required physical fitness, like an acrobat or a dancer.

I mentally slapped myself for this train of thought - thinking in more detail about her body was hardly appropriate right now. Something that would be appropriate right now was apologising. Why had I not apologised right after bursting in? But I was so embarrassed and wanted to play over the incident as coolly as possible ... a strategy that had now earned me the questionable pleasure of having to bring up the subject a second time.

I let out a little sigh because those random five minutes of utter incompetence that I kept having were frustrating me to no end. Whenever I thought that I was a well-adjusted adult, a productive member of society and finally free of all the awkwardness of teenage hood, situations like that came around and everything I had every learned about how to behave in certain social situations went out of the window in the blink of an eye.

In contrast to me, Ms Pierce had seemed far more relaxed about everything. I couldn't be sure whether that was because she was just too sick right now to care, or whether she was that socially confident. Once I had gained the confidence to look at her during our conversation, I immediately noticed the way in which she had curiously eyed my every movement and the impression she gave me of being easily able to analyse me by just looking at me. Maybe she really was confident - in her ability to handle humans, in her ability to read me, in herself, in the way she looked. Maybe she just didn't freaking care about me walking in on her and I was currently busy massively over analysing everything.

Knowing myself, that last thought was actually by far the most likely. I rolled my eyes at myself and noticed that I had absentmindedly wandered back into the nurses' turf. Kurt just silently stood there, grinning from ear to ear.

"Did she ravage your body right on the spot or why did you almost run into a few walls on your way here?" he asked once he noticed that my mind had returned to the here and now.

"Not funny, Kurt. I kinda made an idiot out of myself in front of her. If there ever was any possibility that she'd be interested in me, I sure messed up all of my chances now."

"Oh honey, stop it with the self-pity already. You are such a drama queen and you don't even realise it. Tell me then, which earthshattering event took place that will forever have thwarted your fateful love that was not meant to be?"

I wanted to snap at Kurt's biting sarcasm but stopped myself. It was probably good to have someone around who could put me in my place. Perhaps as a defence mechanism against the self-esteem issues that plagued me for a big part of my life, I had developed a somewhat smug and arrogant attitude in my teenage years. I actively tried to let go of it, but so very often it was just easier to attack the shortcomings of other people, rather than tackling your own issues. I took a breath and decided not to openly react to Kurt's sarcasm.

"Stupid me waltzed into her room without knocking and ran straight into her taking off her shirt."

"I have problems picturing you doing anything straight, hun." Kurt chucked at his own joke, which he used entirely too often, "And seeing a hot young woman take off her shirt has convinced you to join a monastery somehow, or what exactly is the problem?"

"You know a monastery could never handle me," I replied not without a trace of self-satisfaction in my voice, "but no, my sexuality remains firmly intact. Thanks for caring, though. And despite your limited knowledge of the female gender, you should know that being seen shirtless is something intimate for us. It's totally embarrassing to walk in on that. And I even checked her out before I looked away!" My voice had grown more hysterical than I would have liked it to, but I hoped that it would suffice in conveying my problem to Kurt.

"Smart girl," Kurt didn't look distraught by my unfortunate adventure at all "and, what did your checking turn up? Is she as fit as she's pretty?"

"Kurt!" I playfully wiggled my index finger at him "that really wasn't the major issue here!" He seemed rather unmoved by the dramatic faces I made to underline the gravity of this mistake of mine. I gave him a shy smile and quietly added, "But yes, she's fit. Way fit."

"Then I hereby urge you to go for it, Santana. As for the subject of your supposed mistake that you try so insistently to make me talk about - don't sweat it, hun. If a doctor walked in on me taking off my pants, I doubt that I'd care too much. Doctors see people without clothes at work every single day. Why would I think that I'm so very special that this doctor must have special interest in me of all people? I think that sort of thinking requires either a sense of entitlement or some unhealthy sort of self-awareness. And judging from the short span of time that I spent with this Pierce woman, I think she has neither. Does this argumentation satisfy your over-analysing mind?"

Even though I shot him an indignant look, Kurt had a point. A very good one, to be honest. I could easily have provided this argument myself, though - coming up with a few sound arguments was not the problem. Convincing the mess that was my psyche to actually apply rational thinking to something was the problem. Even though my mind absolutely agreed with Kurt, there was still an uneasy feeling in the region of my stomach that made it impossible for me to relax.

"So what's the mighty doctor's opinion on the girl's health? Believe it or not but she didn't come to the hospital to expose herself to you."

"I think she's alright - just as you said, she suffers from a cold. Probably fainted due to pericarditis. I say we keep her here for the weekend and if everything is okay by Monday, she can go home. If you could just give her a 12-channel ECG right now, and then send her down to the ultrasound room. I'll be giving her a quick echocardiography ... Oh shit."

This time, Kurt didn't even bother with his usual smirk, he actually laughed out loud. I probably didn't need to explain my sudden realisation to him. Me giving the Pierce woman an echocardiography meant that I'd ask her to take off her shirt, lie down next to me and then I'd wiggle the transducer of the ultrasound device around her left boob until I found the heart underneath it.

"Dear God, why did I tell her about it? I can't even postpone it until tomorrow because I'm doing the Saturday shift! I told her I'd give her an echocardiography today and then I kinda sort of stroked her legs under the blanket, like I often do with elderly patients. I didn't even think about any of this, really. Now she must think I'm only trying to get into her pants. Not that I would mind getting into her pants - but I don't want her to think like that about me."

"Santana, honey, I've told you what I think about this. I'll just be leaving you alone while you're busy entangling yourself in your own twisted thoughts. Somebody out there is anxiously waiting to get their ECG so they can finally head for the ultrasound room. And since we wouldn't want to keep them waiting, I'll send them down immediately."

Kurt made a chirping sound and disappeared in the general direction of the ECG device. Writing an ECG would take him less than five minutes and the way to the ultrasound room was neither long nor complicated. There was basically no time left for me to get entangled, as Kurt had put it.

Grabbing a pen, I quickly filled out an echocardiography form for one Brittany Pierce and with that thing in hand, headed towards the ultrasound room. It was located a few stories below us, in the area where patients that had just arrived at the hospital were being managed. I opened the door to the ultrasound room and, just as I had expected, no one was still working in there at this hour. While I waited for the ultrasound device to boot, I turned to the computer located in the room. I searched for my patient among my ward's current inhabitants and quickly found her.

Her full name was Brittany Susan Pierce, she was a few months younger than I was and had never been admitted to our hospital before. It was a bit creepy that I could just look up possibly sensitive information on her with a few clicks while she didn't even know my first name. It felt unfair, like I wanted her to be able to access the same kind of information about me. Not that I thought she'd be particularly interested in the dimensions of my left kidney - I just wanted things to be equal between us.

The ultrasound device made a jingle to announce that it was done booting and I covered the stretcher on which patients lied during ultrasound with a fresh disposable sheet. Over the rustling of the paper, I almost didn't hear a timid knocking on the door. When I opened it, Brittany Pierce stood shyly in the door frame; her blue eyes big, innocent, searching.

"Hey, I'm here to get some sort of ultrasound done ... an echo-something. You're the doctor from earlier, right? Did I find the right room?"

I felt my shoulders fall slightly as it became obvious that she didn't remember my name. You shouldn't be that disappointed, I thought to myself, you only mentioned it in passing and it bears no significance to her. Fighting down the unpleasant feeling bubbling in my gut, I forced out a smile, nodded and motioned for her to enter the room.

"So have you ever gotten your heart examined via ultrasound?" I asked her. Maybe she knew what was happening. That would hopefully make it less awkward.

"No. I've only been to the hospital once, when I broke my wrist as a kid. They let me go once they had given me the plaster, though." Agh, curses, there was no escaping the awkward.

"Okay," I said slowly. I took off the lab coat and threw it over a clothes hanger on the wall. The small ultrasound room always heated up immensely in a short amount of time and I really didn't need any more sources of heat than were already standing in the room.

"So what I want to do is look at your beating heart, live and in real-time. To do that, I will put this ultrasound transducer to a few places on your upper body and the resulting image will be visible on this screen then. In order to see something, one needs to have gel between the transducer and the skin. It's a bit cold and icky, but perfectly harmless. Apart from that, the ultrasound won't hurt or anything and you just need to lie there still. Is that okay?"

"Yeah, sure," she shrugged, "you had me at 'doesn't hurt'."

"I'll have to ask you to take off your shirt. The bra is usually okay, you can keep that on. Just put your clothes on that chair there." Alright, that sounded sufficiently professional. Brittany smiled and eagerly pulled her shirt over her head before I had finished speaking. Well, she certainly wasn't shy.

"Lie down on this stretcher, please. Lie on your left side, tucking your left arm under your head and your right arm flat on your right side."

She walked over to the stretcher while I put on gloves and sat down next to the ultrasound device on a little stool. I put some gel on the transducer and held it above her like some sort of impending doom.

"Okay, here we go. Don't freak, it'll get kinda cold and wet on your chest now."

My hands trembled just as badly as they had when I first learned how to do ultrasounds. I set the transducer down onto her skin, between her breasts, just slightly to the left of her sternum. After wiggling the transducer around for a bit, I managed to get a very nice and clear picture. My eyes were now trained on the screen of the ultrasound device, away from her body and my interest for all things medical took over again, laid itself over my embarrassment and washed it away.

Just as I has expected her heart was in very good condition, beating efficiency and regularly, with all the valves intact. I then switched to a transducer position that would allow me to actually verify my hypothesis on her fainting. The position was on the left side of her rib cage, slightly below and left of the left breast. Rearranging the transducer gave me a slight, tingling sense of embarrassment again - but it was lighter this time; her actual diagnosis being more interesting to me than her hot body.

Out of routine, I measured how much of blood contained in the heart would be pumped out with one beat and I examined the flow over the valves. Measuring the speed of blood flows always came with a weird audio representing the speeds, which would never cease to sound very alien-like to me. As I adjusted some settings to only examine the speeds currently relevant to Brittany's heart, the weird audio got louder and Brittany turned her head to look at me with a very dreamy and curious expression.

"What is that sound?" she asked.

"It's an audio representation of how fast blood flows in and out of your heart. I can look at different sections of the heart and check for unusual speeds. For example here," I turned the screen so Brittany could see it, "we have the left chamber of the heart and the aortic valve. The left chamber gets blood with a lot of oxygen from the lungs and pumps it into our biggest artery, the aorta. From there, it feeds all our different organs. The aortic valve separates the left chamber from the aorta. If the speed of blood we measure here is unusually high that means the aortic valve doesn't open completely and the blood has to be squeezed through a much smaller hole at higher speeds."

"And you can see all of that information in that little grainy line there?" Brittany seemed to genuinely interested, "Does my valve-thing open completely?"

"Yes, I look for sharp spikes of the graph in this place," I point it out to her on the screen "but your graph is nice and smooth there, so your valve is opening fine."

"Wow, and to think you can know so much about my heart by pointing this little thing to my chest."

She seemed excited about my field of expertise, interested in what I showed her. I was overcome with a wave of joy and pride, and happily went on to show how to examine the rest of her heart.

"And now," I said about fifteen minutes later, "we get to the part that I'm actually interested in, the pericardium. The pericardium is the fibre that surrounds the heart muscle, pretty much like a shopping bag. My theory is that your pericardium has an inflammation, caused by whatever caused your cold. If that is true, there is a good chance that the pericardium will produce a little liquid, just like we sweat a lot when we have a fever. That liquid then pools between the pericardium and the heart muscle, and we can see this pooling of liquid via ultrasound. Remember what colour liquids have in ultrasound?" I felt like a teacher, and I loved it.

"Black! And the heart muscle is dark grey-ish!" Brittany answered eagerly. She seemed almost insulted by having to answer such an easy question.

"So we're looking for something black that's outside of the heart muscle. Here, this is where the heart muscle ends and this fine grey line here is the pericardium. And what do we have here?"

"A black shape, like the crescent moon. Pooled liquid!" She almost did a little happy dance on the stretcher because she just found out that her heart was being sick right now. Her childlike ability for excitement and joy was extremely adorable.

"Exactly! Wow, you should be doing my job, you don't even need me!" I quickly measured out the pericardial effusion that I had spotted almost twenty minutes ago and printed a picture of it.

Brittany pouted. "Of course I need you! If it weren't for you, I might have thought that the liquid was outside of the pericarium," I smiled at her troubles pronouncing the word, "how can you be so sure it's inside and not outside?"

"That's because I know very well what the healthy state looks like, so I can spot things that are different somehow very easily. Learning how things look normally is always the first step of medical learning. So we're kinda doing it the wrong way around for you right now."

"Well, maybe I should have a look at a healthy heart then."

"Do you think you'll get more ultrasound lessons soon?"

"No, I mean like, right now."

"But how would that work? I can't have you examine another patient for legal reasons."

"I'll just examine you! Your heart is healthy, isn't it?"

For the first time in quite a long while, I felt embarrassed again. I wasn't too sure whether I could handle Brittany with an ultrasound transducer all over my half-naked self. But she looked at me so expectantly, with a hint of bashful thrown in, that I didn't find it in myself to disappoint her.

"Okay," I said and got up from my little stool, putting the transducer away. I walked over to a wall where a dispenser for paper towels was next to a sink, grabbed a few towels and handed them to Brittany. "You can clear that weird gel off of you with these". She quickly wiped herself off and then jumped to her feet. Without bothering to put on her shirt again, she pulled on a pair of gloves and disposed of the used towels.

"Shirt off! Lemme get to that heart of yours!" she chanted happily.

Either Brittany was dangerously innocent and asexual, or she was toying masterfully with me. I wasn't sure which interpretation of her behaviour I preferred. My hands were trembling as I cautiously pulled my shirt over my head and dropped it on the chair next to Brittany's. The sight of our shirts next to each other pleased me, probably way more than it should have.

Under Brittany's impatient eyes, I positioned myself on the stretcher. Once I was lying correctly, I began instructing Brittany, who had by now claimed the small stool like it was an emperor's throne.

"There's a bottle of gel to your left. Put some of it on the trans-"

"What is that stuff anyway?" Brittany interrupted, "some sort of lubricant?"

I snorted loudly at Brittany's question. She either didn't notice her innuendos or she tried to kill me with them. Then Brittany seemed to laugh at my rather unattractive snort; a cheerful, beautiful laughter. It didn't make me feel ridiculed at all, so I smiled widely at her when I finally answered, "No no, nothing like that. It basically erases the echo resistance between the transducer and your skin. Without it, the picture would be much worse due to a bit of air remaining between your body and the transducer."

"Mhmm," Brittany was already very busy searching the correct transducer position on my rib cage. She kept brushing over my boob awkwardly and I helped her find the right spot. Turning her eyes to the screen, Brittany suddenly grew very quiet. Her brow furrowed ever so slightly and light wrinkles formed on her nose.

"Do you have a nice view?" I inquired softly.

"Yes, I do. It's amazing in fact. Like I have your life force directly in front of me." Brittany looked at the ultrasound device in such awe; I found it hard to disturb her. But we had been in here for far too long; Brittany wasn't my only patient and if I wanted to get home before midnight, I had to get back to work.

"And, what about my pericardium?" I thought I should at least address the reason for her fingering my boob unconsciously with hands sticky from ultrasound gel before ending our little session.

"It definitely looks different from mine ... Is this here where the muscle ends? And where do you see the perivaium?"

"Yep, that's where the muscle ends. And the pericardium is directly on the muscle, you can't see the tiny space between them that is always there. But you can see how the border of my heart muscle is much smoother than yours. Yours looks more ragged because of the inflammation and the liquid in there." I cleared my throat loudly. "So, that wraps up our little ultrasound lesson."

Brittany looked like she had just snapped out of a trance. She jumped up to get me some paper towels, and then just as eagerly put them onto my chest. I was pretty sure that even I had to be blushing by now. Trying to look as unfazed as possible, I got up and quickly put on my shirt and lab coat.

"Well, Ms Pierce, that certainly was an unusual ultrasound. But we did support my theory pretty soundly. I'll be looking at your ECG up at the ward later but I think it will show the same thing we have just seen. My plan for you is that you'll have to stay here over the weekend, then we'll do some check-ups on Monday and if those are okay, you can go home then. Is that alright with you?"

I had a hard time deciphering the look on Brittany's face. She nodded slowly. I gave her a soft smile and told her to go back to her room and that I'd come by again in a bit. Finally, she put some clothes on again and that immediately made me get less tense. She curtsied cutely and skipped out of the room.

After staring at the door through which she had just left for a minute more, I turned towards the computer in the room with a furrowed brow to type out the result of Brittany's examination. I had problems finding the correct words, though, because this woman had left my mind a complete mess. And I still hadn't apoplogised.

**A/N: I really hope I can get the next chapter out as fast as this, what with me having guests over and going to Uni again. But I think that Brittany's easier to write, so maybe that evens out :) **

**Feel free to drop by my tumblr and say hi! projectilevomitingrainbows(.)tumblr(.)com**


	4. Chapter 4

The feeling in my gut was funny. Funnier than the dizziness in my head and funnier than I felt after sleeping this afternoon. It was especially funny because it was so full of contradictions. There was anger and disappointment, there was joy and giddiness. The funniest thing about the feeling, though, was that it had no reason to be there in my gut.

I guessed that the only thing one was supposed to feel like about an ultrasound was neutral. It was just this thing that doctors do to you when you're in the hospital, it was part of their job and the only thing that really mattered was whether the doctor saw any illness or not.

The result of the ultrasound was the part of it that interested me the least, though. The doctor had mentioned something about my heart being affected by my cold and there was some liquid next to something in my heart- but most the things she had told me about that were foggy in my head. The memory of what she had said and showed was hazy; the only thing I remembered was watching her lips move so beautifully and her eyes shining so excitedly as she spoke. It was the very same spark of excitement that she had gotten before in my room when she was talking about medicine.

The way I could produce pictures with the ultrasound machine actually had been pretty cool, there was no denying that, but I mostly kept looking interested while she was rambling about medical detail so the spark in her eyes wouldn't go away. Whenever she talked that excitedly about things she was interested in, it was like some invisible weight was lifted off of her shoulders. I wasn't sure whether she was actually aware of that, she probably had dragged around that weight on her shoulders for so long she didn't notice it anymore.

Seeing her act so much more freely and at ease was thrilling to me. Without her weird weight to carry, she looked like the prettiest woman in the world. And by keeping the spark from going away, I could contribute to her staying in that beautiful state - so one could say that I made her pretty. I knew the thought was a bit far-fetched but I liked it a lot. It made me feel like I was a contributor to something really precious and special. And contributing to something special made me feel special. There was a strong urge in me to make the spark stay in the doctor's eye all the time. Although that probably meant that I would have to be near her all the time and I thought that would make her work quite difficult to her.

And maybe her work being difficult was part of the weight on her shoulders. The way she walked, like when she entered the ultrasound room, looked hurried, rushed, maybe even chased. Was there someone or something chasing her? Did her work chase her, her boss maybe? But she had seemed so happy when talking about medicine. The shining in her eyes told me that she loved what she did. How could one love one's job but also feel so burdened by it?

That thought confused me. Although what happened in the ultrasound room had improved my mood, my thinking was still as slow as molasses on a cold day. I blinked to clear my mind a bit.

After I had wandered back to my room, a nurse had brought me some hot tea and told me to lie down and rest. I didn't object because I had thought that was a very good idea. The world around me wasn't really spinning but it just felt all wobbly and blurry. Taking a sip of my tea, I closed my eyes again and tried to think of something nice to distract me from feeling sick.

Oddly enough, the pretty doctor came to my mind. Even more odd was that I didn't think of the ultrasound. I thought of when she first talked to me in my room and how she had put her hand on my leg after she had overcome her first awkwardness. There had been a blanket over my legs so she didn't technically touch me. I also didn't think that the doctor had really meant a whole lot of stuff with that. It was just meant to tell me that I was being cared about. Or at least it felt nice thinking of the gesture like that. I didn't know, I couldn't think straight.

But the image of her dark, slander hand was crisp and clear in my mind. I actually found myself looking down my legs to check whether the doctor had come in while I was thinking to myself and had put her hand back there. After checking twice and very carefully, I concluded that I was still alone in my room. The spot on my leg that she had almost touched felt weird and tingly, though.

Somewhere inside myself I knew that this was a freaky thing to think and feel. She was my doctor, we had barely just met and I didn't even remember her name. Yet I already found myself fantasizing about her. That was freaky, right? It also probably made me sound kind of desperate.

I wasn't desperate, though. Or I didn't think I was. Why would I be? I was really happy with my life right now; there was no reason to be desperate. Apart from being sick maybe, but that would make for a whole other type of desperate.

Imagining pleasant stuff wasn't desperate, anyway. It was nice. Why would one worry over that? That was stupid. So many things that one kept thinking about where actually really stupid. Like, just wasting so much time on thinking about them until your brain hurt was stupid. Nice things were nice, one should enjoy them and not worry about whether it's right to enjoy them.

Why was I thinking about all of this? Now I was thinking too much about thinking too much. Guess that made me sort of a hypocrite.

I sighed. I didn't really like this day. It was just so full of times where my head felt weird, and I didn't understand what my head or my body was doing. A glance on my phone told me that it was just past seven. At least this day wasn't going to be all that much longer. My phone also told me that my parents had called a few times. They probably were worried about me. Maybe my neighbours had told them I was in hospital? I decided I needed to call my mum. Tell her that I was fine and tell her not to worry.

She picked up the phone very quickly. My mum wasn't so good with mobile phones, she usually would search all her stuff in frenzy when her phone rang and still miss the call.

"Brittany, darling! You finally called! Your dad and I were about to search the hospitals of the area for you!"

I told her to calm down, and I told her what happened during the day and how I got into hospital and how I was really fine by myself. The last part was the lie. It was not that I needed my parents around; I was old and independent enough to manage without them. The thought of not being alone in this boring hospital room, of someone distracting me from the weird things this cold did to my head was very comforting, though. Also, I wanted my mum to cook chicken soup for me and bring me some. Trying to get healthy without soup seemed senseless to me. My lie must have been pretty obvious; because my mum announced Dad and her were gonna visit first thing tomorrow.

"Will there be soup?" I asked.

"Soup? What do you mean?"

"I mean the soup that you always make for me when I'm sick."

"So you want some chicken soup? Oh honey, you know I'll bring you all the soup you want."

"That's really nice of you, Mum. I'm really looking forward to your visit tomorrow. But I think I'll go to sleep now. I kinda want this day to be over."

"That's very understandable, dear. You go get yourself some nice sleep! Your dad keeps motioning for me to greet you from him. So, greetings from Dad! We love you! Bye!"

She hung up and I let the phone drop onto the mattress next to me. I was really excited to see my parents tomorrow. We didn't live that far apart but I hadn't visited them very often lately; we were all kind of busy with our own lives. Though I had told them that I wanted to go to sleep now, I wasn't sure whether I'd actually be to fall asleep. I didn't like sleeping in beds that weren't mine. They never smelled the way my bed smelled and that always threw me off. I associated sleeping with the smell of my bed, and anything that didn't smell like my bed I didn't associate with sleep, like this hospital bed for example.

It probably was a silly thought, but it seemed very important to me right now. Ever since I was brought into hospital, I felt like I was living in a very small, sheltered bubble where very few things were important. My resting was certainly among the very few important things. What other things mattered now? I didn't need to worry about things like work, or college, because I could only take care of them after recovering anyway. My parents worrying themselves had mattered, but I had already spoken to them.

I tilted my head a bit when another weird idea came to my mind. There was something that kinda mattered to me but it didn't seem to matter to anyone else. It was the pretty doctor smiling, like really smiling, so that her eyes lit up and looked all sparkly and wonderful. To me that seemed like one of the most important things my stay here was about. If everyone cared about her smiling the way I did, though, she probably wouldn't look so stressed, because then everyone would always try to make her smile.

I was wondering whether my trying to make get smile helped her at all and whether she actually noticed what I tried to do there when the door opened. A nurse entered, carrying what looked like a food tray to me.

"Here's your dinner," he chirped and set the tray down on my night stand. "Would you like something to drink with that? Water, coffee or a tea perhaps?"

"No thank you, I still have some tea left from earlier," I motioned towards the cup sitting near the food tray.

"But you have hardly any tea left," he touched the cup, "and it's gone cold, too! Wait up, I'll get you some new tea. We have this delicious tea made from raspberry with fine hints of vanilla. It's called 'Hot Loving' and it will make you feel wonderfully warm, so you can sweat out that cold! I will get you some, is that alright?"

I nodded, dumfounded and he left my room just as full of energy as he entered it. Had he just tried to sell me tea or something? I thought he was a nurse, not a tea-salesman. Since when did guys become nurses anyway? Not that I minded, he was really nice but I had always imagined nurses to be strict elderly women in white dresses. What would this male nurse look like in a dress, I wondered... I was fairly sure he had told me his name earlier this day but I couldn't remember it. Today, I was being even more horrible with names than I usually was. It still embarrassed me that I had forgotten the name of the pretty doctor. Would be awkward to ask for her name again? I wanted to know her name, I wanted to call her by her name but I also didn't want her to think she was so unimportant to me I hadn't bothered with memorizing her name...

The door opened again and the nurse stepped in with a steaming cup of tea. He sat it down on my food tray and said, "Here's some 'Hot Loving' for you!" His joke obviously amused him a lot and he chuckled at himself. I smiled, too, because I liked him and I wanted to tell him that it was okay to joke around with me. He smiled back at me and then left the room with a "Bon appetite!" sing-songed over his shoulder. There were probably other patients still waiting for their food.

Once the door had shut behind him, I sat up in my bed and started examining the tray in front of me. There were two sandwiches on a plate; some salad and yoghurt with fruit sat in little bowls. The tea with the funny name smelled very sweet and fruity but it looked like it was still too hot to drink. I took the lid off of the biggest bowl on the tray and was very surprised - in a good way - when I found some soup inside it. It looked like some sort of chowder, nothing like the clear broth that my mum made. I picked up the table spoon on the tray and tried some of this foreign soup. The soup was very warm and smooth on tongue, which made me feel like someone was cuddling me to make the cold go away.

Wait, did that mean I was just imaging to be cuddled by soup? That sure was a weird thought... I shook my head a little and laughed at my own goofiness. Then I returned my attention to eating the soup, because it tasted of cream, and potatoes, and butter, and I actually quite liked it. When I had finished half of the bowl, I picked up my cup of tea because the soup had made me thirsty. I stirred it with a little spoon and gently blew onto its surface to make it cooler. The ceramic cup was very warm between my hands, but not so hot that I couldn't hold it. Careful not to burn my tongue, I took a first sip. The temperature was actually okay and tea was really delicious. That nurse had good taste in tea, I thought to myself.

As I kept on drinking my tea, I started to feel all warm and fuzzy inside. That must be why the tea was called 'Hot Loving', I supposed - it was a very fitting name. I wanted to save some tea and not drink it all at once so I could get the warm feeling a second time. I started eating my soup again and just as I had put the spoon in my mouth, there was a knock on my door.

Because I had an inkling who was knocking so very firmly on my door and then not coming in, even though I was still busy swallowing, a little smile curled the corners of my mouth upwards. It had to be the pretty doctor, who was still so very embarrassed about walking in on me shirtless. The way she got all flustered and nervous about it was really adorable. Maybe I should just casually mention shirts during our conversations ... but that would be mean of me. Speaking of mean, I remembered that the doctor was probably still standing outside my door, not daring to come in.

"Come in!" I yelled and the door opened before I was even finished yelling. She probably had waited with her hand on the door handle, which I thought was also adorable. All in all, I thought her to be quite adorable; although I was sure she wouldn't like to be called that. The doctor closed the door behind her and walked towards me and my bed. In a way, she looked tense and not tense at the same time. I guessed that she was less tense in an awkward way, because she wasn't so embarrassed anymore, but also actively trying to keep herself from looking not tense. I saw that she straightened her back with effort and that her jaw was set more firmly and that she raised her eyebrows to make herself look more attentive. Then my eyes feel upon the deep shadows under her eyes, and I remembered that it was almost eight in the evening and concluded that she was probably really, really tired.

When she reached my bed, she bowed her head ever so slightly and gave me a small smile. She didn't say anything, though, so I absentmindedly continued to spoon soup into my mouth. Then I realised that it was rude to eat in front of other people when they didn't have anything to eat, so I basically let my spoon drop to my tray. The doctor almost jumped to the ceiling from the sudden sound and I realised that dropping the spoon had also been rude. Heat rose to my cheeks as I searched for words to explain myself.

"Oh shit, I'm so sorry. I was just eating my soup so I could get healthy but I just suddenly had this thought, you know, that it would be rude to eat in front of you when you had no food. Do you want some of my food? Then again, you're not sick, so you don't need soup. Well you could have one of my sandwiches..."

I didn't really need to see the very confused look in her eyes to know that I was rambling and not making a lot of sense. She took a deep breath and told me to calm down. So I took a deep breath, too. Following your doctor's orders was always good.

"I'm pleased to see that you have been provided with some food. Now, I came here to talk to you about what we're going to do with you in the next few days. My suggestion is that you stay with us over the weekend, to give you some rest and keep a bit of an eye on you. You do seem fairly stable to me, so you can basically do as you please while you're with us - but I recommend that you rest most of the time and I'd also like you to stay wired up for at least another day. On Monday, we'll check up on your heart and if it's doing well, you can go home. How does that sound to you?"

Was I really supposed to give my opinion on this? I wasn't a doctor, I couldn't say whether that was a good way to go about things or not. It sounded reasonable enough but it really didn't sound like anything more than that to me. An uncomfortable silence had settled between us while I was thinking and it made things seem more serious than they were. So I decided to just say something until I had finished forming an opinion.

"That means I'll be here for three nights, yes? Because I'm afraid I might not be able to sleep here."

"What makes you think so?"

"Well I can't sleep in places that don't smell like my bed. And this place doesn't smell like my bed at all, it smells like a hospital. Which is, I guess, because it is a hospital..."

"And what if you made this bed smell more like yours?" The doctor's voice was very calm and gentle, although she had to cut through my mindless rambling again. She was being really patient with me and I liked the way she looked at me with her tired but pretty eyes. I didn't really know what she was talking about, though, so I looked at her with a questioning expression.

"If we put something that usually is in your own bed into this bed, it will smell more like your bed and you'll have an easier time sleeping. Do you have some pillows on your bed, for example?"

"Not really... but I do have plushies on my bed, a lot of them. Sleeping without plushies is not proper sleeping! I'll ask my parents to bring them when they visit me tomorrow."

The pretty doctor smiled but looked away and didn't meet my eyes. "Your parents are visiting and they're bringing plushies for you? Well it seems that you're well cared for this weekend. Is there anything else you'll need tonight?"

I wanted to tell her that she was the one caring well for me tonight. I wanted to tell her that her idea had been really great and really cute. Somehow, I also wanted to tell her that I would somehow manage to go to sleep if it meant that the time until I got to see her again would go by faster. But it somehow felt wrong to say it like this.

Instead I answered, "No, I'm fine. I have some nice soup and I'll be perfectly okay with just a bit more of 'Hot Loving'."

Before I had realised what I had just said there, the doctor was already staring at me with her eyes wide open. I blushed profusely and I kinda wished I didn't have such light skin that would always get as red as a tomato when I blushed. It didn't really matter, though, because the doctor was staring a hole into the floor with her eyes right now and couldn't see my face anyway.

"Sorry, that sounded wrong. 'Hot Loving' is the name of the tea that the nurse gave me... He's a really nice guy, so he gave me this really delicious tea," I stammered.

The doctor cleared her throat and I could actually watch her switch back into professional mode. Escaping into being as professional and doctor-like as possible was her method of escaping uncomfortable situations, that much was obvious. That was an okay escape mechanism, at least to me - I didn't very much like the thought of having made her uncomfortable once again, though.

"I'll probably be seeing you again tomorrow because I'm working the Saturday shift. I won't be in on Sunday but I'll be performing your check-up on Monday. For now, I hope you have a good night despite the smell," she said and her voice sounded all doctor-y. She had two doctor voices: the one where she got all excited and happy; and the one where she got all professional and distant. The latter one was the one she used right now and I didn't like it. I'd much have preferred the other one, or at least her somewhat insecure voice that she used when she was embarrassed. Hopefully without her noticing, I leaned in a bit closer to her and tried to smile my nicest smile for her when I said, "I'm really looking forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Will you be coming here in the morning?"

She probably didn't notice me coming closer because she didn't inch away, which I firmly believed she would do should she register me moving in her general direction. Instead, she just answered my question and said that she had to be here by eight and she'd see me between nine and eleven.

"You have to be in by eight?" I asked, "But that's only twelve hours from now! Why are you still at work if you need to work again so soon? And you look so tired, too. You're not staying longer because of me, are you? I don't want to be a burden!"

I knew the last question had been a shot in the dark and pretty unnecessary, too - but the thought of her staying longer for me was nice and made me feel like the tea had made me feel. The question seemed to have made the doctor a bit nervous again, she kept looking at her weirdly intertwined fingers when she said that no, no, she just had a lot of work today. Part of me believed her because she knew best about her own work; part of me believed she was telling a white lie to make sure I didn't feel like a burden. For several reasons, I liked the latter interpretation better. Because it meant she wanted to make me feel better about being a burden. Because it meant she wanted to make me feel like I was better than a burden. But mostly because it meant that she actually was staying longer to be able to talk to me. Especially that last part was really unrealistic and the sort of thing you shouldn't be thinking about someone you just met.

I didn't care much, though, and just revelled in the thought for a bit. The doctor extended her hand towards me which probably meant this conversation was about to end. Before it was actually over, I already missed her presence in my room. Reluctantly, I took her hand. I didn't want her to shake my hand. I wanted her to put her hand on my legs and stroke them just a little and make me feel like everything was going to be alright, just like she had done earlier today. Maybe I could try and will her into doing that by telling her so with my eyes. But I didn't know how one said "I want your hand on my legs" with one's eyes, at least not how to do that without looking like a prostitute.

And because I couldn't think of any look that would work that way, I just tried to look nice. I tried to look nice and I very softly and slowly shook her hand as I got up from my bed and stood facing her. Even though I was only wearing socks, I still stood taller than her. The doctor slightly tilted her head back and had to look up to meet my eyes. I decided that I liked being taller than her because looking upwards made her eyelashes look even prettier.

Then I realised that I was staring at her eyelashes and that was probably rude - or would have been rude if the doctor didn't stare at me, too. Maybe my failed attempt at influencing her with my eyes had worked after all. Not that she was doing what I had actually wanted her to do but I enjoyed the attention she was giving me right now just as much. It was fairly obvious to me that the attention was not of the medical kind, that she probably wasn't even allowed to give that kind of attention to me and that it might get her into trouble. And if it didn't get her into trouble with her boss, then I was sure she'd beat herself up over it afterwards. She seemed like the type that would think very much about was appropriate and I didn't want her to waste her time on thinking too much because of me.

So I stopped staring at her and let go of her hand. It took the doctor a while to realise that we weren't shaking hands anymore, like she had been a bit lost in her own little world. She gave her little head bow again, wished me a good night and left the room pretty quickly.

I let myself fall back onto my bed. What had that been? More than the doctor thought it should be, probably. Despite telling myself not to overthink things earlier, I couldn't help but feel guilty. The doctor wasn't comfortable with overstepping the borders of professional interaction, I sensed that, and I still couldn't keep myself from flirting with her. Had I been flirting? Actually, I had only been staring at her eyelashes. It wasn't my fault that they were being so beautiful.

But I had also wanted her to put her hand on my legs, so maybe I was kinda interested in her. Maybe I was only interested in the way that she made me feel better. Maybe all of the stuff I was thinking right now didn't actually make sense.

I finished eating my dinner. I felt sort of weird and lost and left alone and giddy, all at the same time. It was very confusing.

Perhaps the worst thing was that I really wanted to know whether I was gonna flirt with the doctor again. Tomorrow, maybe. I really wasn't desperate, but I liked her and she was pretty and flirting was fun. Unfortunately, most people didn't think flirting was that easy. For me, it was just a fun thing to do; for them, it was so complicated and meaningful. And I didn't think that I was a complicated person. Just sick and tired and feeling dizzy in the head. Maybe I should lay down a bit, my thoughts weren't making a lot of sense and everything looked kind of wobbly again. Weird, I thought as I curled up on my bed and closed my eyes, when the doctor had been here, my head had felt pretty clear. I didn't manage to think much more about that because I quickly drifted off into sleep. I didn't even notice what the hospital bed smelled like anymore.


End file.
